1/11/13 - Appearing on CNN this morning, "Gun Appreciation Day" chairman Larry Ward said that if blacks had been armed, there never would have been slavery in America. Ward's group planned the appreciation day for the weekend of President Obama's second inauguration, and some critics have attacked the celebration for its proximity to Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.

"I think Martin Luther King, Jr. would agree with me if he were alive today that if African Americans had been given the right to keep and bear arms from day one of the country's founding, perhaps slavery might not have been a chapter in our history," Ward told CNN host Carol Costello.

Co-panelist Maria Roach of United for Change USA immediately took issue with Ward's claim, labeling it a "ridiculous" example of "theater" in the gun debate. She then went after "Gun Appreciation Day" as a whole, calling it a "power play" that ignores the victims of mass shootings and instead focuses solely on appreciating the weapons themselves.